Now if only they can bring down the cost of the Steam Deck and Steam Machine
I never got a PlayStation but I was holding out for a PlayStation 6 once it finally got released. If there is no version for physical discs I will definitely not be getting one. Nothing worse then wanting to play a game you haven’t played in a while and then having to redownload it because you had to delete it to free up space for other games.
So much nicer just to be able to throw a disc in and go.
Nothing worse then wanting to play a game you haven’t played in a while and then having to redownload it…
Not even Dermatobia hominis? Or anthropogenic climate change? Or like, genocide?
That’s funny because you describe the play station even when you have the physical disks.
I wanted to get a PS5 but since almost the only thing I’m actually interested in playing on it is Demon Souls I figured I’d wait until they got a lot cheaper before picking up a console exclusively to play like 2-3 games. Then AI drove the prices way up, Sony added 30 day online checks for their games, and now a digital only PS6 means I’ll probably not be getting anything from them for a long time.
Or run into weird licensing issues you have no control over and the $80 game you bought no longer exists.
Or you still have the game but they just removed the sound track and changed some of the character’s faces.
Steam sales.
Are poop now.
Post it. You know which meme.
I want an edit of the “he can’t keep getting away with this” to “he can’t keep winning” lol.
Valve’s main advantage is they don’t have to make up heinous policies in the quarterly game of “tug off the shareholders”.
It’s all been fucked by AI RAM and SSD (and still GPU) prices. If anyone tries for a next gen £1000 console, they’ll be going the same way as Sega.
That sure is a lot of people who would probably like to be able to purchase reasonably priced PC hardware.
I wonder what playstation would be like if it had embraced linux rather than fighting it.
don’t quote me, I might remember things wrong but, there was a version of PlayStation 2 or 3 that had Linux, freedom spooked Sony Source
yeah. this is what im talking about. imagine if they encouraged it and yeah maybe they would have to stop selling at a loss but still if they just made their own system based on linux. I mean microsoft was their main competitor at the time.
Sony is way too into proprietary lock-in to have allowed that long term. Hell, I’m astonished they ever allowed the release of their games to PC. They’ll never do that again.
see that is just the thing. If they had went linux and relases their pc games as linux compatible but not windows compatible. I mean im thinking in that their box just became a kind of sony linux distro with their whole system made around it. Then like windows users would have to use a linux compatibility thing. I think this would have been a better play.
Now I’m imagining a parallel time line where they went full in on linux and even put a custom linux build on their experia phones, sony viao laptops and the psp.
woa. I sorta forgot they had all that. sony could be the linux brand.
Frankly, antitrust laws should prevent loss leaders from being a thing in the first place. Whether it’s to get people in stores because of an amazing deal, people to buy into your ecosystem because hardware isn’t that cheap otherwise, or using venture capital to drive competition out of business by offering prices subsidized by investor money that others can’t compete with to drive them out of business and set whatever prices you want, it’s all anti-competition (especially the last one, that’s blatantly trying to set up a monopoly).
Its clear that PC is the future console. I’ve been buying in GOG primarily, and Steam only when it is not available there and has no chance of ever being there. Even your Android TV can play light games with GameNative installed
Valvle is the only only one supporting Linux!. The rest are greedy fucks.
Funny to see articles like this after the wave of steam machine bad press. If you visit console based subreddits there are so many bagging in Steam.
Meanwhile you’ll never own a PlayStation disc again after next year. Great contribution to the industry Sony!
The funny thing, is that if you check the people who bought the steam machine, they’re happy with their purchase too
I have a theory.
The “casual” or “mainstream” crowd, the one that used to buy CoD, FIFA, Madden, Sims and such yearly like clockwork, has transitioned to phone apps, or sports betting/fantasy.
Their attention has been robbed from consoles.
Meanwhile, “games as art” gamers that treat them more like movies are less affected, especially with the state of smartphone app stores. That segment continues to grow on PC, and maybe even consoles, but the attrition of the first group masks that for the console crowd.
I’d postit that another factor is Steam’s rising market share coming at the expense of other PC gaming storefronts. For market purposes, it effectively is PC gaming now.
Then explain the worldwide sensation that is the Switch. Logically speaking, that thing, if you can even call it a thing, shouldn’t have worked, it made no sense financially nor economically.
It totally does. My sister got it to play Pokopia and Animal Crossing. I know of families that have gotten it for their kids, for similar reasons.
I’m not saying it’s a smart buy, but not everyone is a seasoned, mature gamer. If you have a decent budget, zero spare time, no experience with PCs, and your young kid is dying to play Pokopia like all their friends, a Switch 2 makes sense. As a plus, it’s not a tablet where you have to deal with straight up scam apps, nor a expensive PC where you need some technical know-how and a lot of oversight to make it safe for one’s kid.
The Xbox and PlayStation, on the other hand, have lost that niche, as they aren’t strictly needed to play Fortnite or whatever media is en vogue these days. It’s not like when I was a kid and literally my whole grade had Xboxes to play CoD and Halo.
One appears to actually like their customers and the other two are actively hostile towards them. I’m sure somebody at Microsoft/Sony are scratching their heads trying to figure out what’s wrong.
Sony’s disc move just screams of a corporate accountant trying to improve the financials and they pick one of the dumbest options to cut costs on. Retailers are obviously upset as digital download cards probably sell like crap compared to physical copies. Outside of gifts I have no idea why anybody would bother.
Also worth mentioning Sony’s CEO and CSO sold 56% and 18% of their shares 2 days after the disc announcement to the tune of millions.
Sony has a 457m lawsuit against them for antitrust issues which they’ve historically defended with…physical disc sales. So I’m happy to see that decision blowing up in their face and I’ll wait for the outcome on that.
That’s the point. It’s not about the disc. It’s about cutting out retailers.
Games sell at the same price or cheaper at the retailer as they do digitally, and the retailer takes a cut. Games sold through PSN or the Xbox store make Sony and Microsoft way more money.
And that’s before we get to used sales.
Don’t get me wrong - not to argue. Hate the fact that they’re doing this but asking this genuinely objective point of view.
Why should retailers’s business would be concern to Sony? Isn’t this similar if I was an iron supplier and decided to not sell my materials to one manufacturer that I’m not tied with an agreement, just because I’ve decided not to?
One could argue, with video games specifically, that they lose part of the market without the retailer.
A lot of games are played by kids, and parents, friends, and other family members still go into a store and buy a game to give as a gift.
Sony doesn’t want to come out and say “Best Buy can get fucked” because Best Buy still sells headphones, TVs, and other products Sony makes, including the Playstation itself. They need the retailers to sell their products.
But with digital goods, they can cut out the retailers retailers. The $10 bucks or whatever the retialer would get now goes to Sony.
Tell me again how many discs valve is selling? What happens to your steam account when you die?
I like valve, but don’t fool yourselves, Gabe N does not give a shit about the customers any more than Asha or Hideaki.
Why would I want more plastic crap? I have zero issue with this.
My account is my entertainment, I see no reason to have it after I die. My kids don’t want it, they have their own.
The savings and convenience far outweighs any second hand retail. I am glad I don’t have to burden my kids and family with even more physical crap they would have to toss out.
Well, that’s just objectively incorrect. Gabe at least recognizes that piracy is a service problem and being consumer friendly is more profitable in the long-term. People like Asha and Hideaki can’t seem to figure that one out no matter how much evidence is given to them.
i love steam but he does raise a good point. vavle explicitly said that steam acc is legally not transferable. there’s no second hand market and your library is legally gone for good when youre gone.
no matter how good valve is right now. the threat of enshittification is real, and will remain so until the discourse of the right of owning digital game is settled.
Oh yeah, Steam is not perfect by a long stretch. It mostly looks good by comparison with it’s competitors who appear to take being gently asked NOT to shit directly down their customers throats as basically a death threat. Was just pointing out that saying Gabe doesn’t give a shit is incorrect, as he does give a shit insofar as giving a shit has actually turned out to be the best long term strategy for Steam’s profits.
That said, Steam actually does have a history of honouring wills to transfer a dead persons library to someone else on death, despite that technically being disallowed by their ToS. So they aren’t bound to do it legally, but they do currently tend to. Which honestly might get them into some legal hot water if they ever try to enforce that term.
Valve is one of the few companies that has historically honored people’s bequests and allowed bequeathing their libraries to others after they die. Unlike say Apple who has outright said that your iTunes purchases disappear into the ether when you die.
Remember when PC gaming was dead according to every outlet for two solid years?
I remember. I also remember it was started by Tim Sweeny when Gears of War was taking off. I also remember when Sweeny come crawling back to PC with EGS after Fortnite became BR king.
PUBG made billions of dollars, Fortnite copied that, and Tim was suddenly interested in PC again lol
The crossplatform gaming is way better than even two years, I play games with friends on xbox or playstation all the time, no special software it all just works. So yeah im definitely never buying a conolae again lol.
Fuck yeah, love you Valve.
Love your contributions to Linux more though.
Gaben-kun will notice you
Maybe he’ll even send me a Steam Frame! Or a yacht! I heard he has a bunch of those.
Ew. That’s a corporation. Stop.
If a corporation does something good, it’s OK to say, “Hey, good job. I love that!”
If a corporation does something legitimately shitty, it’s definitely OK to criticize them mercilessly too (I do it all the time, would recommend).
What’s not OK is trying to tell me people what they can or can’t praise/criticize.
Good lord you people are so gross. It’s actually more than OK for me to tell you that worshiping some greedy billionaire is an insane and unhealthy thing to do.
Go touch grass, Gabe doesn’t give sit about anything except making huge gobs of money. Steam fanboys are a bunch of weirdos.
Holy shit who said anything about worshiping? Unhinged response. Follow your own advice and touch some grass buddy.
The echo chamber on this platform is spacious.
I dunno, even if it results in billions or even trillions of humans deaths, I’d rather corpo die than let one thrive. The best form of economics that is not only financially but morally sounds is that of anarchy
You’d rather the entire human race be wiped out than a corporation do well?
You probably should stop having your own opinions, you really suck at them.
You said “Fuck yeah, love you Valve.” Loving a corporation is weird. Loving the actions is less-so.
Maybe you’ve have enough Internet for today but before you go, allow me to explain:
When someone says something like that, they don’t literally mean it.
“I love tacos” does not actually mean that I have genuine feelings of love for them (even if they are delicious).
It’s just a phrase.
Ah, so I guess I shouldn’t take it as “Valve is a good actor” at all? That’s just the wrong interpretation or something? Valve is not an actor. It cannot be a good one. For profit corporations are, by definition, not aiming for net positivity.
Tacos are not actors. No one says “I love tacos” because they witnessed tacos acting in a behavior they deemed ‘good’. They say “I love tacos” because it gives them satisfaction when they eat them. No one says “I love Meta” in the same way people say “I love Tacos” because they think Facebook is a good actor for doing some open source stuff. No one says “I love Meta” because “I love Meta” is “just a phrase” as you put it. That makes no sense.
Tacos are not actors.
I’m taking this out of context and there’s nothing you can do about it.
